Clara Oswald

‘Doctor Who’ Season 9, Episode 1: “The Magician’s Apprentice” Reaction

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“The Magician’s Apprentice” relates to “Deep Breath,” Peter Capaldi’s introductory episode as the Twelth Doctor in a simalar way to how the Eleveth Doctor’s second season premiere “The Impossible Astronaut” relates to Matt Smith’s debut episode “The End of Time.” In both cases, Steven Moffat uses the episode introducing the new Doctors is a classic Doctor Who one-off episode establishing the new Doctor and his relationship to his companions while using the following season’s premiere episode to tell a sprawling, complicated, and complex narrative that will theoretically make more sense by the time the entire season unfolds. I don’t mean this derisively at all; I trust Steven Moffat as a storyteller and as a showrunner, and I’m encouraged by the connection between “The Magician’s Apprentice” and ‘The Impossible Astronaut’ because Season 6, the season that ‘Astronaut’ kicked off, is my favorite season of the series so far.  Continue reading →

‘Doctor Who’ Series 8, Episode 12: “Death In Heaven” Reaction

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Doctor Who (series 8) ep 12

If the two-part finale is a sandwich, I feel like all the meat was in the first installment and in the second we were left with some bread and a little bit of cheese. While “Dark Water” was interesting, funny, and a bit moody, “Death In Heaven” was basically just wrapping things up with some action interspersed throughout. It wasn’t horrible by any means, it just didn’t live up to the promise of the first part of the finale.  Continue reading →

‘Doctor Who’ Series 8, Episode 10: “In The Forest of the Night” Reaction

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Doctor Who Series 8 (ep 10)

Let’s start out by acknowledging that good child actors are hard to find and good performances from children are hard to get. This is not as an excuse for anyone but simply an acknowledgement that for every Haley Joel Osment or Maisie Williams there’s a thousand of everybody else. Having said this, I don’t think the problems with this episode really had anything to do with child acting, nor do I think this episode had any really massive problems anyway. I just think there were a lot of little problems that all added up to an unspectacular episode.  Continue reading →

‘Doctor Who’ Series 8, Episode 9: “Flatline” Reaction

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In a previous post I discussed a method of casting I believe to have been employed on Season 3 of HBO’s Girls whereby there was a conscious effort to cast actors of color in peripheral roles in the wake of backlash against the show for its lack of minority representation. It appears to me that Doctor Who, a series which faced a similar backlash for its representation of people of color, is employing the same method.  Continue reading →

‘Doctor Who’ Series 8, Episode 2: “Into The Dalek” Reaction

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Much like Fox Network’s excellent Cosmos with the outstanding Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “Into The Dalek” was basically an episode of The Magic School Bus with a much better teacher than the insufferable Miss Frizzle. Whatever the state of The Doctor’s pedagogical accumen, I have to say I didn’t walk away from this episode feeling like I actually learned anything new or exciting about Daleks. I could’t help but feel like we’ve seen most of this before. Part of this is pretty much unavoidable; part of what’s great about Daleks is their consistency-Daleks are reliable. I’m not sure we learned anything about the Doctor either, as its been well-established that he’s basically a war criminal who hates Daleks at a fundamental level. Continue reading →

‘Doctor Who’ Series 8, Episode 1: “Deep Breath” Reaction

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I’m sure I’m not the only one who already feels like Peter Capaldi has already been the Doctor for a long time now.  By the end of “Deep Breath” his performance felt both familiar and fresh at the same time. I’m not sure what more one could ask for from a transition than that very feeling I just described. I can’t go so far as to say that the transition has been seamless; to do so would be ignoring how dissatisfied I was with “The Time of the Doctor,” but I will say that on this back-end of the change, on the transition from one Doctor I liked immensely to one I was giddily excited for did not disappoint.  Continue reading →